Hm... for the sake of personal amusement, I'm going to rate all the Peter Hammill albums I've got in my midnight revision break... since I'm not showing my face in my thread until I've got another review done (I'm halfway through four of them
), you guys get to suffer it. Ahahahaha...
Title - one-line-review, favourite track.
Strict site rating/personal rating
Fool's Mate - a charming pop debut from Hammill, complete with a superb list of guest musicians and a proudly eclectic range of influences. Imperial Zeppelin. 2/3.
Chameleon In The Shadow Of The Night - my all-time favourite singer-songwriter album with a Van Der Graaf Generator epic tagged on the end: unusual, bold and so, so beautiful. Slender Threads comes to mind, but any'll do. 4/5.
The Silent Corner And The Empty Stage - perhaps Hammill's first really independent and confident solo material, rarely matched for intensity, eclecticism and sheer passion. The Lie, maybe. 5/5.
In Camera - another bold step in the progressive rock realm, with some mindbogglingly deep electronic instrumentation, a more personal lyrical style; a self-assured departure from work with Van Der Graaf Generator. Gog, I think. 5/5.
Nadir's Big Chance - and, in the department of many surprises, what I've heard called the first British punk album; idiosyncratic pop and rock songs with particularly strong performances from Guy Evans and David Jaxon. Nadir's Big Chance. 3/4.
Over - and it hits you; Hammill's break-up album is evidently going to be a love/hate matter, but the introduction of the excellent Graham Smith, the incredible orchestral centrepiece This Side Of The Looking Glass and the piercing passion of Hammill's voice make this a must have. Lost And Found. 4/4.
The Future Now - an acquired taste, if there ever was one; this album features Peter Hammill taking on the world, with a new depth to his mass harmonies and a synthesis of his weird sound-experiments and real 'songs' that is as interesting to fans as it is seemingly baffling for the casual listener. The Mousetrap (Caught In). 3/4.
pH7 - Hammill's obtusely titled 8th solo album sees Hammill pushing his voice to new
oddities and picking up the sticks... as well as a shift from masterful
lyrical phrasing to a more direct meaning, this one really runs as a
transition for later stuff, but nonetheless, a bloody good transition,
remarkable for David Jaxon's sax and flute work, in particular. Mr X (Gets Tense). 3/4.
A Black Box - Hammill enters the 80s with progressive credentials not only intact but running overtime with a sidelong epic as moving and creative as much of Van Der Graaf Generator's classic material, and despite its reliance on piano and acoustic guitar, it's rich in style and arrangement; the first half is somewhat left in its shadow, but the couple of conventional rockers are compensated for with fascinating small dark electronic pieces and rich imagery. Flight, unsurprisingly. 4/4.
Sitting Targets - Hammill's first
move in a real pop/rock direction, but nonetheless bafflingly odd and comprised of great songs, with especial credit for the dance rhythm segueing to a guitar solo in the title track, as well as a palpable interest in atmosphere - not for the conventional prog-is-twenty-minutes-long-and-has-a-keyboard-solo listener, but for the incessant 80s prog revisionists, a must. 4/4.
Loops And Reels - hardly even related to all of the above, Loops And Reels is an electronic album with the most unusual world music opener I've yet heard, and an odd song off A Black Box thrown in for good measure; brooding, forbidding and yet very rewarding to engage with. An Endless Breath, perhaps. 4/4, maybe pending an upgrade.
Skin - a peak for Hammill's 80s output, 1986s Skin sees Hammill coming back with both weird 'pop' songs, a contemporary set of synths and some of his most progressive work ever; mean and lean material, even with a digeridoo, Hugh Banton on Cello and a killer bonus track. Four Pails. 4/5.
And Close As This is again working with synthesisers, but in a very different context - using them to modify a single-pass-of-the-hands performance rather than in huge multi-tracked works; consequently, an experimental set of singer/songwriter work, including one tune by Keith Emerson for the trivia freaks and one of my favourite piano-and-voice-numbers ever; I do perhaps wish he'd gone a little further with the instrumentation, but that'd probably have been a mess. Too Many of My Yesterdays. A fascinating 3/3.
*gap*
Fireships sees something completely and utterly different. Calm, 'inoffensive' and very ethereal music, with programmed drums all over the place and no real break-outs... sounds like a disaster, but in fact this ends up with a full album of some of Hammill's best-written, best-sung and most subtly-arranged pieces... and you have to admit that noone has really done anything quite like it before. Gaia. 4/5.
Singularity is again, different, not surprisingly given the time gap between these albums and I did not like it one bit at first. Glad I gave it another chance, though, as the subtly written electronic work is catchy in its own way, and at times extremely striking. Strangely, I can never decide whether I like the rock song on it. Famous Last Words
maybe. 4/4.
... Live
The Margin + is the K Group's testament, perhaps, with one disc being more subtle and artistic and the other driven on by pure aggression and verve. Very oddball, not exactly even in terms of performances, but more because of the sheer force of the thing rather than inconsistent quality... the classic numbers are well re-arranged, and some of the 80s songs really gain a lot by the transition to a live context. Modern is particularly good. 4/4.
Veracious I haven't heard enough yet to judge... mneh.
Also, I listened to The Snow Goose the other day and it was
really good... I mean, yes, not an unbridled masterpiece, but it got under the skin in a way that I hadn't expected it to, and I have to admit some of the guitar work is much more sophisticated than I'd thought.
/PAlogo_v2.gif "Progarchives.com Homepage")
SR V: To boldly go where no room has gone before
Topic Options
Ricochet wrote:
